Many years ago, on one of my regular trips to Whitby, I bought a small wall plaque that read ‘Happiness is a way of life, not a destination.’ because I feel like that sentence reflects how I feel about life and happiness, and it’s always stuck with me.
I think a lot of people put their happiness at the end of a road that is going to be hard to get down. You know, them “I’ll be happy when…” sentences we all allow to spill from our mouth every so often. The ‘I’ll be happy when it’s the weekend’, the ‘happy when I’ve lost three stone’, the ‘happy when I’m out of town’. Of course, we probably all will be happy when we hit them aims or events, however, I think we forget to take notice of the small happies when we’re so focused on the big happies to come.
I have big happies to look forward to, or strive for, like when I get another job, or when I’m finally stood in a venue again waiting for a band to appear on stage. But for me, the big happies don’t come often enough to rely on them, so I’ve learnt to live for the small happies in life instead.
Like the feeling of excitement when I find a new song I love, when I laugh so hard it hurts, when that cup of coffee feels like it touches my soul, or when the cat does that slow-eye-close-thing, to tell me she loves me. They’re all really small things, but how rubbish would life be without them?
On Christmas Eve 2020, I spent most of the day on my own. My boyfriend was at work until late, and I never have any Christmas Eve plans (and in a pandemic, I had even less!) so I spent most of the day cleaning and tidying. Now, I’m not usually someone who enjoys cleaning, but this day I was into it; I was dedicated to making sure the entire house was as perfect as I could make it. Of course, none of this really mattered because no one was able to come to see it, and we were out of the house on Christmas day, but none of this mattered to me: I was on a mission.
My house has three floors, so tidying and cleaning the entire thing wasn’t an easy task, and when I had finished, I head back downstairs to celebrate that I had absolutely nothing left to do. The house was perfect, all presents were wrapped and where they needed to be; it was officially Christmas time for me.
After I hid the hoover away from the cowering cat, I put some Christmas music on and sat on the floor in the living room where I noticed it was snowing outside. I sat and watched it while my cat rubbed her wet nose all over my hand, demanding love and attention.
Sitting there, watching the snow fall, listening to Michael Buble and cuddling my cat, while our black and gold Christmas tree glistened in the corner of the room; it was perfect.
2020 was a sad year, but in that moment I was happy.
Taking note of all the small happies around me made me cry, and reminded me just how good life can feel when I take the time to feel all the small happies around me.
I will remember that moment forever.
Life can feel pretty rubbish sometimes, but I believe if you take your binoculars off the future and away from the bigger picture for a moment every day to notice the small happies – you might be surprised.
Gwen Richards 